Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Preface

1 What Did You Expect?

2 Reason to Continue

3 Whose Kingdom?

4 Day by Day

COMMITMENT 1: We will give ourselves to a regular lifestyle of confession and forgiveness.

5 Coming Clean: Confession

6 Canceling Debts

COMMITMENT 2: We will make growth and change our daily agenda.

7 Pulling Weeds

8 Planting Seeds

COMMITMENT 3: We will work together to build a sturdy bond of trust.

9 Sticking Out Your Neck

10 Someone to Be Trusted

COMMITMENT 4: We will commit to building a relationship of love.

11 All You Need Is Love

12 Ready, Willing, and Waiting

COMMITMENT 5: We will deal with our differences with appreciation and grace.

13 Amazing Grace

14 Before Dark

COMMITMENT 6: We will work to protect our marriage.

15 Eyes Wide Open

16 On Your Knees

17 Worship, Work, and Grace

PREFACE

For some reason I seem to be drawn to write about things I’m not very good at. Marriage is a prime example. I got married at twenty and was all too sure of myself. I was convinced of my character and maturity, and I thought marriage would be easy for me. It wasn’t! It didn’t take long for the true selfishness and impatience of my heart to be revealed. But I worked to deny what God was clearly revealing. I fought to convince myself that I was not the problem. I got good at persuading myself and worked hard at persuading Luella, my wife, that I was right and she was wrong. But God, in his gorgeous grace, was unrelenting in his pursuit of me, and Luella was committed to being honest with me.

I was heading for disaster and I didn’t even know it. Now, don’t misunderstand; I wasn’t a constant monster, and I really did want my marriage to Luella to work. The problem was that there were things inside me that made the kind of marriage this book is about utterly impossible. I analyzed, rationalized, criticized, and generally pointed the finger. But there was no escaping it—I was the problem. I had been surrounded by grace, grace that would not rest until I had been delivered from the one thing I could not escape by myself—me. I went down kick­ing and screaming, but God was gracious and Luella was patient until I began to face the one thing I had fought so hard to admit: I desperately needed to change.

Luella and I just celebrated another anniversary. When we look back, we are amazed at all that has happened, all that God has done. We love one another dearly, and we are very grateful for our years together. They have been rich and exciting. We have not experienced too many boring days. We love being with one another, and we love celebrating shared life. But there is something that we love even more. We love Jesus and his transforming grace. We love his Word and the stunning wisdom that it contains. We know our story isn’t a story of marital success. No, our story is the story of two people who have been rescued by grace and wisdom again and again. Over and over we have been forgiven and empowered by God’s grace. Over and over we have been convicted, convinced, transformed, and directed by his Word.

If you could watch a video of our life together, you would soon real­ize that we have not “arrived.” We are still being rescued by that same wisdom and grace. God is still working to reveal and win our hearts. We wish we could say that the war of love is over in our marriage, but we can’t. Love of self still gets in the way of love for God and for one another. And when it does, our marriage suffers. There are still times when we have a greater trust in our instincts than we do in God’s wis­dom, and when we do, our marriage suffers the results of our foolish­ness. So, we rest in God’s wisdom and grace, but we do not rest in our marriage. As long as we are two sinners living in a fallen world, there will be work to do.

Sometimes that means being willing to serve when it’s the last thing we want to do. Sometimes it means being willing to listen when our instinct is to argue. Sometimes it means being willing to love, even in those moments when the other doesn’t seem deserving. Sometimes it means humbly asking for forgiveness when we are tempted to argue that we were right. Sometimes it means being willing to go through a moment of tension so that truth can get on the table. Sometimes it means being willing to overlook a minor offence. But there is one thing that we know for sure: as we rest in God’s grace, we are called to give grace to one another. And as we celebrate God’s wisdom, we must be willing to let that wisdom be our moment-by-moment guide as we relate and respond to each other.

I don’t have any personal brilliance to give you. In a real way, this book is a testimony to my own rescue. I offer to you and your marriage two things: God’s powerful, transforming grace and his life-rearranging wisdom. In these two things you will find hope and real change for your marriage, and as you do, you too will learn what it means to rest and work at the same time.

— Paul David Tripp